The checkout is where the money is won or lost, and most stores lose more of it than they realize. Baymard Institute’s aggregate of dozens of studies puts the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate around 70% (as of 2025) — meaning roughly seven in ten shoppers who add to cart don’t finish. The good news is that the leading causes are fixable design choices, not mysteries: surprise costs, forced account creation, and a checkout that asks for too much. Offer a guest checkout, show the full price early, keep the form short, and support the payment methods people actually want, and you recover a meaningful share of that lost revenue.
This guide covers what a successful checkout looks like, which flow and payment options to choose, why shoppers abandon, and how to reduce abandonment step by step.
Key takeaways
- Offer guest checkout. Forced account creation is one of the top reasons shoppers abandon — let them buy first and create an account after.
- Show total cost early. Unexpected shipping, taxes, or fees at the final step are a leading cause of abandonment.
- Cut the form to the essentials. Fewer fields, autofill, and address lookup all reduce friction.
- Offer the payment methods people use — cards plus digital wallets like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal for fast, trusted checkout.
- Single-page vs. multi-step is a real decision: single-page can feel faster; a clear multi-step flow with a progress indicator can feel simpler. Test on your own traffic.
What does a successful checkout process look like?
A successful checkout is fast, transparent, and reassuring. Fast means the fewest steps and fields needed to complete the order, with autofill and saved details doing the typing. Transparent means the full price — product, shipping, and tax — is visible well before the final confirmation, so nothing ambiguous appears at the last moment. Reassuring means visible trust signals: recognizable payment logos, a security indicator, and a clear returns or guarantee note near the pay button, right where doubt tends to surface. The whole flow should feel like the store is trying to help the customer finish, not extract commitments from them.
Measured against that bar, most abandonment isn’t a pricing problem — it’s a friction-and-surprise problem the checkout itself creates.
Which checkout flow should you use?
The structure of the flow shapes how much effort the purchase feels like. Pick by your catalog and your customers, then confirm with your own data.
Single-page vs. multi-step checkout
Single-page — what it is: All checkout fields on one screen. Best for: Simple orders and returning customers who want to see everything at once and finish quickly. Trade-off: Can feel dense if the form is long. Multi-step — what it is: The process broken into clear stages (information → shipping → payment) with a progress indicator. Best for: More involved purchases, where breaking the ask into digestible steps feels less intimidating than one long page. Outcome: Neither wins universally — a clean single page and a well-signposted multi-step flow both convert well. The deciding factor is your specific traffic, so A/B test rather than assume.
Guest checkout vs. forced account creation
What it is: Letting shoppers buy without an account versus requiring signup first. Best for: Always offer guest checkout — it’s one of the highest-leverage abandonment fixes there is. Outcome: Requiring account creation before purchase pushes first-time buyers out of the funnel; per Baymard, forced account creation is among the top reasons shoppers abandon at checkout. Capture the email during a guest purchase and invite account creation on the confirmation page, after the sale is banked.
Why do shoppers abandon at checkout?
Abandonment clusters around a few predictable, self-inflicted causes — which is exactly why it’s addressable. Baymard’s research on the reasons people leave (beyond “just browsing”) consistently surfaces the same offenders: unexpected extra costs — shipping, taxes, and fees revealed too late — as the single biggest driver; being forced to create an account; and a checkout that’s too long or complicated, with too many fields and steps. Distrust of a site with payment details, and slow or clunky checkout performance, round out the list. Each of these is a design decision the store controls, not a fixed cost of doing business.
The strategic read: you don’t reduce abandonment with a discount code at the exit. You reduce it by removing the surprises and the friction that caused people to hesitate in the first place.
How do you reduce cart abandonment?
Attack the known causes directly, in roughly this order of impact.
- Enable guest checkout. Remove the account wall. Offer signup after purchase, not before.
- Show the full cost early. Display shipping and tax (or a clear estimate) before the final step, and surface any free-shipping threshold so it isn’t a last-second surprise.
- Shorten the form. Ask only for what you need. Use autofill, address lookup, and combined fields to cut typing and errors.
- Offer the right payment mix. Cards plus digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal) let returning shoppers pay in a tap and skip manual entry entirely.
- Add trust signals at the pay step. Place security indicators, accepted-card logos, and your returns policy right where the customer commits.
- Make it fast and mobile-friendly. A slow or fiddly checkout on a phone leaks sales; large tap targets and a responsive layout matter here most.
- Recover the ones who still leave. Use abandoned-cart email and, sparingly, exit-intent reminders — but treat recovery as a backstop, not a substitute for fixing the flow.
Which payment options should you offer?
Offer enough choice to cover how your customers prefer to pay, without cluttering the page. Cards are the baseline and non-negotiable. Digital wallets — Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal — are worth prioritizing because they let shoppers pay without typing card and address details, which is especially powerful on mobile where manual entry is the enemy. Buy-now-pay-later options can lift conversion for higher-ticket items by spreading the cost, though they add fees and complexity — add them when your average order value and audience justify it. Whatever mix you choose, ensure your payment processing meets the PCI DSS security standard; handling card data securely is a requirement, not an option, and visible security is itself a conversion factor.
Frequently asked questions
Should I require customers to create an account?
No — offer guest checkout. Forcing account creation before purchase is one of the most common reasons shoppers abandon at checkout. Let them buy as a guest, capture their email during the order, and invite them to create an account on the confirmation page once the sale is complete.
What is the biggest cause of cart abandonment?
Unexpected extra costs. Per Baymard Institute’s research on checkout abandonment, surprise shipping, taxes, and fees revealed late in the process are the leading reason shoppers who intended to buy walk away. Showing the full cost early is the direct fix.
Is single-page or multi-step checkout better?
Neither wins across the board. A single page can feel faster for simple orders and returning buyers; a clear multi-step flow with a progress indicator can feel less overwhelming for more involved purchases. Because it depends on your catalog and audience, A/B test both on your own traffic before committing.
How many form fields should a checkout have?
As few as genuinely necessary to fulfill and ship the order. Long forms are a documented driver of abandonment, so combine fields where you can, use address lookup and autofill, and drop anything you don’t strictly need. Every field you remove is one less reason to quit.